NASA to launch safety review of SpaceX and Boeing after video of Elon Musk...

[docmordrid]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

[whitelancer64]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

Both companies are going to be subjected to this review.

[RotoSequence]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

Both companies are going to be subjected to this review.

Going by SLS, Boeing is bullet-proof.

[docmordrid]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

Both companies are going to be subjected to this review.

Pure optics & cover. Very transparent.

[ulm_atms]

Well...here are my final thoughts.

1.  Weed and the Feds do not play well together.  Given due to law.
2.  That video of Elon smoking weed has been out for quite some time.
3.  In all that time.....no issues with safety reported.
4.  NASA has many people on the inside of SpaceX.  Still no reports of safety issues.
5.  NASA has many people on the inside of Boeing.  Still no reports of safety issues.
5.  Story about SLS retirement......BOOM!  Elon smoked weed so we need a safety review for both SpaceX and Boeing and the HEAD of NASA will get in on looking at "issues" 

What makes this so funny to me is that it all looks like a bad PR hit job someone didn't think through.  What makes it even funnier to me is Boeing...the main contractor for SLS...which has been in dev FOREVER....and swarming with NASA people forever also....um.....now they want to look into company safety?  Elon's video did that???  Really?? I don't buy it.

Something tells me that since they called out Elon directly...they had to include both CCP companies just to make it look like they were being fair.  Nothing else really adds up at this point of why Elon's video got Boeing involved too.  Elon did X so lets look at SpaceX and Boeing. 

EDIT:  Anyone think Boeing's review is also going to involve the entire SLS side like it should if we are being "fair"?

[rayleighscatter]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

How does Boeing benefit? It's a fixed price contract.


Besides, if someone in power simply wanted to screw Musk and SpaceX all they had to do was push the SEC to do more than slap his wrist over his "Tesla going private" lie. Market watchers pointed out he could have been barred from being an officer at a publicly traded company, which would have stifled investment to SpaceX because there's no point in getting in early in a company that can't go public.

[yg1968]

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1065051422541131781

[Rocket Science]

Wasn't NASA just told to cut costs recently...

[mlindner]

Wasn't NASA just told to cut costs recently...

Cancel commercial crew because "it costs too much" push forward Orion as an alternate for crew transport (it's even "commercial" it's made by Lockheed) followed by patting themselves on the back that SLS is the way humans get to space.

[rockets4life97]

Makes me glad that BFR isn't being funded by NASA or the Air Force.

[su27k]

True...If he was working on the company time high as a kite or drunk off his butt sure, you statement is valid.

CEO doesn't clock in and out.

Of course they do, otherwise Musk as the CEO of Tesla is using a lot of Tesla company time on a unrelated company: SpaceX, and vice versa.

[Rocket Science]

Wasn't NASA just told to cut costs recently...

Cancel commercial crew because "it costs too much" push forward Orion as an alternate for crew transport (it's even "commercial" it's made by Lockheed) followed by patting themselves on the back that SLS is the way humans get to space.

Just play it as the "safety" card instead again and you get the same result...

[ChrisWilson68]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

How does Boeing benefit? It's a fixed price contract.

Two ways:

1. Their image doesn't get hurt by having Starliner so far behind Dragon 2 in carrying crew.

2. Boeing's SLS work isn't as likely to be canceled as quickly because all of SpaceX is slowed down.

Besides, if someone in power simply wanted to screw Musk and SpaceX all they had to do was push the SEC to do more than slap his wrist over his "Tesla going private" lie. Market watchers pointed out he could have been barred from being an officer at a publicly traded company, which would have stifled investment to SpaceX because there's no point in getting in early in a company that can't go public.

Not everyone in power has power over the SEC.  The NASA administrator, for one, doesn't have any power over the SEC but a lot over NASA.

Anyway, Musk being barred from being an officer at a public company wouldn't stifle investment in SpaceX.  Everyone knows SpaceX won't go public until the Mars city is a reality.  At that point, Musk can simply step down as an executive while still retaining all real control through his voting shares.

And also, the SEC couldn't necessarily have gotten that.  They arranged a deal with Musk where he agreed to some penalties.  If they had demanded more, Musk might not have agreed and the SEC might have entirely lost at trial and gotten nothing.  That's what plea bargaining is all about -- the prosecutors don't agree to lighter penalties out of the goodness of their hearts -- they agree to them because they think there's a risk they'll get nothing if they don't agree.

[docmordrid]

Follow the money or who benefits; slow SpaceX down so Boeing can catch up.

How does Boeing benefit? It's a fixed price contract.

Prestige, capture the flag, PR, give ULA breathing room by casting shade on Rival #1. 

Besides, if someone in power simply wanted to screw Musk and SpaceX all they had to do was push the SEC to do more than slap his wrist over his "Tesla going private" lie.
>

Which, as several analysts pointed out, was going to be  a very hard case for SEC to prove. Especially if Musk really meant it.

[A_M_Swallow]

Last month a Russian manned launch, with a NASA astronaut on board, suffered a safety problem and was aborted. NASA's response may now be widening to cover rival manned launches to the ISS. The pot smoking incident just increase the response from do not assume safety is OK to check.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-launch-russia/space-crew-survives-plunge-to-earth-after-russian-rocket-fails-idUSKCN1ML123

[rayleighscatter]

Which, as several analysts pointed out, was a very hard case for SEC to prove. Especially if he really meant it.

He admitted $420 was made up as a joke. He didn't mean it.

[mlindner]

Makes me glad that BFR isn't being funded by NASA or the Air Force.

I'm quite glad about it as well. I was actually wishing for SpaceX to refuse the Commercial Crew/CCtCap contract when NASA switched it to FAR instead of Space Act like was used for COTS and CCiCap. It should never have been FAR and this type of nonsense is exactly why.

[ChrisWilson68]

True...If he was working on the company time high as a kite or drunk off his butt sure, you statement is valid.

CEO doesn't clock in and out. There is nothing wrong with NASA enforcing their contract.

(b) (1)The Contractor shall institute and maintain a program for achieving a drug-and alcohol-free workforce. As a minimum, the program shall provide for preemployment, reasonable suspicion, random, post-accident, and periodic recurring (follow-up) testing of Contractor employees in sensitive positions for use, in violation of applicable law or Federal regulation, of alcohol or a controlled substance. The Contractor may establish its testing or rehabilitation program in cooperation with other Contractors or organizations

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NNK14MA74C-SpaceX-CCtCap-Contract.pdf

If Dragon 2's chief designer didn't get follow up drug testing, then they didn't meet the minimum requirements for policies supporting a drug free workplace.

It's off company time.  It's behavior that is technically a violation of the law, but a violation that is of a sort that is not enforced and is very widely practiced in public.

If he were to be prosecuted for that behavior as a criminal matter, the case would be thrown out, because it's selective prosecution.  Essentially, if the government has a law but knowingly declines to enforce it a lot of the time, it loses the ability to enforce it at all because selective enforcement is a violation of the due process clause of the constitution.

So, since it's not behavior that could legally be prosecuted currently, it's questionable whether it can legally be considered a violation of the contract.  Again, there's a due process argument that it cannot.

If the federal government had a general program that made an attempt to arrest and prosecute all aerospace workers they can find who used this drug, then they would have a good legal standing to consider this a violation of the contract.  But given that the federal government does not do that, there's a good case to be made that a court would not uphold Musk's behavior as a violation of this contract, on due process grounds.

[docmordrid]

Which, as several analysts pointed out, was a very hard case for SEC to prove. Especially if he really meant it.

He admitted $420 was made up as a joke. He didn't mean it.

Perhaps the amount, although analysts then and now had estimates Tesla could go higher than that.

The intent to go private at a high price, and thereby cause pain to the shorters? Guaranfrickinteed true.

[su27k]

Which, as several analysts pointed out, was a very hard case for SEC to prove. Especially if he really meant it.

He admitted $420 was made up as a joke. He didn't mean it.

No, he added a 20% premium to come up with a price of $419, this part is no joke and can be defended easily. Then he rounded it up to $420 as a joke, which is harmless.